Richard Baxter's Catholic theology plain, pure, peaceable, for pacification of the dogmatical word-warriors who,…Richard Baxter's Catholick theologie plain, pure, peaceable, for pacification of the dogmatical word-warriours who,…

502. But remember that it is not the Knowledge, but Decrees and Volitions of God that our enquiry now is about: And Aquinas and his followers commonly say, that Gods will goeth not so far as his knowledge; and that he knoweth indeed mala ex bon• of which they are the privation (as no doubt he doth so far as it is not imperfection to be said to know them, or as they are objects of knowledge) but yet that Mala neque vult, neque •• lit, sed tantum non-vult, as Lombard said.

503. Ockam Quodlib. 3. q. 6. hath the question, Utrum Cognitio intu• tiva potest esse de objecto cognito? And he 1. concludeth that per potentiam divinam potest esse de object• non existente; but he meaneth only quod fuit vel fuerit. 2. That naturally it cannot be. And faith that Contradictio est quod vis•o sit, & tamen illud quod videtur, non sit in effect• nec esse possit: Ideo contradictio est quod chimaera videatur intuitive: fed non est contradictio quod illud quod videtur nihil sit in actu extra ca• some suam, dummodo possit esse in effectu, vel aliquando fuerit in rerum natura—Unde Deus ab aeterno videt omnes res factibiles, & tamen •unc null• fuerunt—By which it is plain, that he meaneth as Aquinas, that it is not as Nothings, but as Possibles and Futures they are known even by God, saving that Aquinas and his followers judge that they are from eternity fore-known in their proper existence, by reason that all times and things are present in Eternity. Now to know a Possibility of a thing, is ⟨p. 75⟩not to know the Thing: But to know the Power. For Possibile is nihil. And as Ockam proveth, that Universal is qualitas mentis, and is nothing else, nor any where else existent, so we may much more clearly say de Possibili that besides Potentia it is nothing but the Conceptus mentis what that Power can do.